Sammy, Now what?

Rick Morrissey, TRIBUNE REPORTERCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Finally, something that seems tangible. Something you can point to and say, "Here. Here's something that at least approximates proof."

Sammy Sosa had been the untouchable suspect in baseball's steroids mess, the stealth person of interest. He had joked about taking Flintstones vitamins for added strength, and many people had laughed along with him as they watched those mammoth home runs become specks in the distance. In terms of a smoking gun, all we had was a corked bat in 2003.

That changed Tuesday. Before the Cubs and the White Sox were to play at Wrigley Field, The New York Times reported that the retired Sosa was one of the 104 players who had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. Sosa's agent had no comment; Sosa could not be reached.

In a way, it was a perfect cosmic convergence. Oh, how Sosa lived for the spotlight the Cubs-Sox series presented. How he lived for the super-size stage, for the energy, for the sprint to right field to start the game.

But there was this other part of him, this alleged other part of him, that was woven together with the boyish excitement over being the center of attention. The pop psychologists among us would say he loved the attention so much he would go to extremes to get it.

Well, Sammy, it's your stage again.

Sosa's legacy will be that he hit a huge number of homers after he transformed himself into a muscle-bound power hitter. You can decide how that transformation occurred. But there's no doubt Tuesday's news tarnishes his legacy in a way suspicions never could.

When he went before a congressional committee in 2005, briefly forgot his English skills and denied using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, you still couldn't find his fingerprints, no matter how many dustings you did.

Then Tuesday arrived.

And now those 609 career home runs are even more suspect. Any excitement felt during the epic 1998 home run race between Sosa and Mark McGwire seems silly now. Believe in the 66 home runs Sosa hit that season at your own risk.

"[But] we need to get it over with. Get those names out there. Whoever is guilty is guilty, whoever is not is not. Let baseball deal with it once and then move on. Every month we seem to talk about somebody and it's not a good thing. It's not healthy for the game."

But as ugly as the drip-drip-drip of leaked names is, the focus needs to remain on the crime that was perpetrated on the national pastime. The identities of the players who flunked the 2003 drug test were supposed to remain hidden, but all bets were off when federal investigators began poking around in the BALCO probe that eventually snared Olympic track star Marion Jones and put home run king Barry Bonds on the defensive.

It's a nasty business, this attempt to get to the bottom of the steroids mess. But a necessary one.

Let's not take our eye off the ball here. Just because it happened in the past doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Just because baseball says it's time to move on doesn't mean we should.

Players caused this problem by using performance-enhancing drugs, starting in earnest in the 1990s. The lawyers who leaked Sosa's name to The New York Times in 2009 did not cause this problem.

"I'm glad now that the union and MLB are on the same page, and they're working hard to make the rules stricter and to be enforced," Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said. "But to speculate on an era of who did or didn't do what, it's impossible. Every now and then, names come out, then they're assumed guilty. ... I feel bad for the thousands of guys who played the game right and are lumped into an era of cheating."

Hendry is right, of course. It's unfortunate that clean players are cloaked in suspicion too. But that's the insidious part of the steroid era and the attempt to bury it in the past. Everyone is or was a suspect. Blame the players for it.

Several days ago, Sosa said he would "calmly wait" for the day the Hall of Fame would call to notify him of his induction. If true, the positive drug test surely will knock Hall fence-sitters into the anti-Sosa camp. He's going to get bedsores from the waiting he's going to do.

Rain caused the postponement of Tuesday night's game. Because of it, Sosa received even more attention. Just not the kind he craves.